


Les ateliers.

by spacestationtrustfund



Series: SOYONS CRUELS [5]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Français | French, Gen, Mai 1968 | May 1968, Period Typical Attitudes, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:24:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18989857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacestationtrustfund/pseuds/spacestationtrustfund
Summary: De mardi mai 21 1968 à vendredi mai 31 1968.





	1. Première partie.

**Author's Note:**

> Well! It certainly has been a while. This fic will (touch wood) be finished by June 2019, fifty years after the events more-or-less ended. The ripples and aftershocks were far-reaching and tenacious—for example, this fic exists. In two parts due to scheduling conundrums and the fact that the author is hecked from the neck up.
> 
> The usual caveats and warnings apply.

* * *

**CINQUIÈME PARTIE: LES ATELIERS.  
La lutte continue.**

**Mardi, Mai 21, 1968**

By the twenty-first the PCF is trying to contain the strikes by twisting them into a simple plea for higher workers' salaries.

“It’s more than that,” Feuilly says, disgusted. The workers are uneasy. They want more than the PCF seems capable of granting.

United, the workers could topple the PCF, and the PCF is well aware of the power it lacks. Even de Gaulle’s reach across the city, the country, is limited. The workers are the backbone, the infrastructure. Without their support, France is guaranteed to fall.

Revolution looms on the horizon.

Peaceful revolution is not the French way. There is no pattern in the history books to dictate how to handle a diplomatic bureaucracy. The French method of revolution is brutal and bloody, loud and unapologetic. Not only does it demand change, it effects it.

“To go from Louis XVI to Louis XVIII, from moderate absolutism to a parliamentary monarchy, clumsy foreigners would have gone by way of a Louis XVII,” Enjolras reads aloud from the newspaper. “We went via Robespierre.”

1793, 1848, 1957. Precedent is the French method. The guillotine models that have been paraded through the streets bear sharpened blades.

Paris is still holding its breath.

Tuesday marks a palpable shift in the energy of the movement. The actual riots have died down by the time the sun creeps away over the horizon, and the city is dark, quiet for once, settled. Bits of ash flutter through the streets, caught on wayward winds. The fires are no longer burning on the cobblestones. The police are no longer patrolling the cafés and bookshops.

The PCF continues to negotiate. The workers argue claims of wages, occupations, unions. The PCF offers a solution; the workers refuse it. They want more than the PCF is willing to offer. Words take the place of bricks. Everything is bureaucratic now, televised.

Any light-heartedness has dissipated. May is drawing to a close.

* * *

**Mercredi, Mai 22, 1968**

By the twenty-second the workers are advocating for worker-run facilities.

“This could be a major change in workers’ rights,” is Combeferre’s take on it.

All forms of media are covering the events now, and the students are still at the Sorbonne, but the focus is no longer on them.

Enjolras sighs. “The PCF wants to form a coalition government with the PSU. To lay claim on the CGT together. They don’t want our help—I’ve asked. They still think we’re meddling, that educational reforms are negligible in the face of their own priorities.”

“If they’re claiming the working class as theirs,” says Courfeyrac dryly, “wouldn’t that be _private property?_ ”

“We’ve accomplished more than they have in these past months,” says Combeferre. He tries to keep the words from being bitter, but they still leave a sour taste in his mouth. “They should be asking _us_ for _our_ help.”

The PCF refuses the idea of allowing the workers to control the factories, the unions, the wages. The power.

“I’m not surprised,” says Feuilly, but he sounds grim. His atelier, like the others in Paris, has stopped printing. There is no longer a need for posters in support of the students. Awareness is spreading, but support is waning. The revolution has moved to a higher step, to bureaucratic government, to debates made by men in ties and stiff collars who haven’t had to fight for their right to exist.

* * *

“You’ll never believe what happened,” says Courfeyrac, dropping into the seat beside Prouvaire. “So the _footballeurs_ have occupied the FFA and demanded that they be given their fair share of the profit, instead of the capitalist system.”

“You’re right,” Prouvaire admits, “I don’t believe you. _Football?_ Who are you—Bahorel? The government pays them well enough to keep them well-fed and compliant in their pens.”

“Listen to this—‘We _footballeurs_ belonging to the various clubs in the Paris region have today decided to occupy the headquarters of the French Football Federation. Just like the workers are occupying their factories and the students are occupying their faculties. _Why?_ In order to give back to the six hundred thousand French _footballeurs_ and to their thousands of friends what belongs to them: football. Which the pontiffs of the Federation have expropriated from them in order to serve their egotistical interests as sports profiteers...’”

“I don’t know anything about football,” Prouvaire admits, “but that’s insane, what are they planning to do, join the riots? Cinema was one thing, with Godard and Truffaut and the like, but I never considered that sports would play a role. Not that I’m complaining, of course. More support is good.”

Courfeyrac pauses before answering. “Yes. Support is good. They’re supporting the workers, but it’s still good.”

“They’re trying to divide us,” says Prouvaire. He means the PCF, the government, de Gaulle, the administration, and capitalism as a whole. There has always been a chasm between the students and the workers.

 _Ça_ _s’élargit_ , someone says.

It widens.

* * *

“The problem with the students at Nanterre and Sorbonne was that we were seen as things, not people,” says Combeferre, bitter. “The problem with the workers in the factories was that they were seen as things, not people. Do you see the problem yet? They don’t treat us as equals. When they say they want to debate in a bureaucratic fashion, that would require both sides being on even ground.”

“And our ground is tilted.” Enjolras taps his pen against his lips. His fingers have finally healed, the bandages removed, the bruises faded.

This is the bitter truth of bureaucracy: a censure motion by a leftist group falls eleven votes short of a majority in the Assemblée Nationale. The government continues negotiations with union confederations, doing its best to wear them down. The paperwork, the minutiae, are stifling.

And in the streets, what happens? The media coverage has turned to the Elysée, and the police take full advantage. No one seems to mind anymore if a few students go home with more bruises than usual, more black eyes or cut lips. Who would keep track? It’s dangerous to be out alone, besides.

This is what happens: Enjolras and Combeferre plan to meet Cosette in the Musain. When they arrive at the café, they find the windows boarded up and the door locked. The lights inside are turned off. No one is inside.

There are _flics_ , then, leaning against the wall.

Cosette marches up to them with confidence. “Good day, Messieurs, pardon us,” she begins, “but do either of you know what happened to the café here? My friends and I, we used to come here—”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

The police exchange looks. One steps forward, sets a hand on Cosette’s forearm. “Listen, Ma’moiselle, you should go home,” he says, glancing at Enjolras and Combeferre. “It isn’t safe to be out here all alone.”

“I’m not alone,” says Cosette, confused, “I’m with my friends—”

“You don’t have any reasonable excuse for this,” says Enjolras, “this is unlawful and—”

The _flic_ backhands him across the face.

Cosette screams, shoving her hand into her mouth to stifle the noise. Combeferre’s fingers spasm, like he wants to do something, but can’t. The air is charged, electric.

Enjolras wipes his mouth, leaving a smear of blood on his wrist. He runs his tongue over his teeth, his lips, testing.

Combeferre knows better than to fight, not now. “Come on,” he says, and takes Cosette’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

Not now.

* * *

**Vendredi, Mai 24, 1968**

“A referendum,” says de Gaulle’s image on the television, “to find a solution to the problem that hobbles France.”

Bahorel boos and makes a rude gesture. “Fuck your referendum. You won’t do anything useful until you die.”

Riots have torn through Paris again, following the traditional path from the Place de la Bastille to the Place de la République, worn down by many generations before this one. The number of arrests is nearly eight hundred, and the seriously injured are more than half that. The Bourse, the stock exchange building, is on fire.

The Bourse has been burning since the early morning; the firefighters can’t get through the crowds to extend their hoses, can’t make it over the torn-up cobblestones to put out the fire. Flames smoulder throughout the city while the students link arms in the streets and sing loud the _Internationale_.

A red flag is raised over the Bourse. The ground floor is turning to ash.

De Gaulle sits at a lacquered wooden desk, pale wood panels behind him. He has a microphone, and a few sheets of notes at which he glances occasionally. He speaks slowly, pausing after each few words. He looks old. Even as his voice is firm, he looks old.

All throughout France, upheaval spreads like the leaping flames that clog the passageway of the stock exchange. France is on the brink of paralysis, according to de Gaulle. The possibility of a civil war grows.

* * *

A Commissaire de Police is killed in Lyon when a workers’ lorry careens off the road and into him.

No one is sure whether or not the incident is intentional. No one wants to admit that it might be.

The Musain is still closed. The students and workers gather in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, which is littered with cigarette ends, scraps of ashy paper, glittering shards of glass. It looks like a war has come and gone.

* * *

“I want to say something,” says Cosette, holding out her hand as though reaching for an invisible microphone. Enjolras hesitates, nods, and Cosette steps up onto the curb at the edge of the pavement, balancing on the toes of her shoes. She takes a quick breath, then says, “My mother is dead. I was—unplanned, and my biological father didn’t care enough to stay. Birth control for women was only made available last year, in France.”

Marius is sat on the curb at her ankles. A month ago, he would have complained that his coat was getting dirty, but now he just sits there, elbows on his knees, threads showing at each patched joint.

No one seems to know what to say. Eventually Cosette steps back down off the stairs and sits on the curb next to Marius. Slips her gloved hand into his cold one. Holds on tight.

* * *

Bahorel and Feuilly arrive arm in arm, whooping loudly. Feuilly’s cheeks are as red as his coat, and Bahorel’s hat is slipping off his head. They look giddy, breathless; wonderfully alive.

Feuilly’s grinning, laughing aloud, and announces to the group at large, “He—de Gaulle—he wants a referendum, of course—”

“That’s no shock, he loves to fall back on those,” says Combeferre, quick and bitter, unaffected as of yet by the apparent festivities.

“—but the best part—you’re going to love this—he needs to get ballots, and—and _no one_ will print them!”

“So yesterday, this guy comes into the printshop,” says Bahorel, shouldering his way into the conversation, “and he asks us, can we print ballots for de Gaulle’s referendum? Feuille here says no, of course, tells the guy we don’t have any machines for the job, and the guy—listen—the guy says, ‘I can see you have machines, you’ve got them working right now.’ And _Feuille_ here”—Bahorel rubs Feuilly’s dark curls affectionately—“Feuilly tells him, ‘Monsieur, these machines are printing pamphlets for the revolution. What will your ballots do for the revolution?’ _Christ_ , it was glorious.”

Feuilly ducks his head, still grinning. “It was kind of great,” he admits, and Enjolras laughs quietly. “I’m surprised Enjolras didn’t say anything.”

“I was somewhat preoccupied,” says Enjolras, sobering the mood. “The fact that he’s pushing for a referendum at all is hardly a victory. We’re hanging in the balance between two absolutes, and the pendulum can just as easily be pushed towards Gaullism as otherwise. This referendum is just his way of playing at a democratic means of stifling the rebellion. We’re so close,” he says, and hesitates, like he means to say something else.

Eventually Enjolras just shakes his head, wordless, and leans forwards until his chin rests on his arms.

The fight is an expansion beyond the simplicity of the students’ revolution, beyond the dispute over workers’ wages and strikes. France is lingering in the gaping valley between wars.

This is the state of nuclear conflict in 1968: Russia’s and America’s Cold War. The first test of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity Test, was twenty-three years ago. There are rumours, now, that Russia has stockpiled more than forty thousand nuclear bombs. The Tsar Bomba, weighing fifty megatons and having a nuclear force twenty-five thousand times more powerful than the combined force dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki over two decades ago, was first tested seven years ago. Mutually Assured Destruction is certain; the war is internecine. There will be a zero sum gain.

The threat of nuclear war is a horrific possibility, yet over time the concept has dulled somewhat. The weapons on either end of the globe are little more than laughing matters and the brunt of comedy. The people will be laughing right up until the first bombs start falling.

Fifty million tonnes of TNT are contained in the Tsar Bomba, the biggest bomb of all time. It could destroy the world.

* * *

**Samedi, Mai 25, 1968**

The ORTF goes on strike next. The state radio and television—gone. The news at 20h—gone. The media coverage of the strikes—gone. Pompidou attempts to negotiate, only to be met with silence. The revolution does not come crawling back when called to lick the shoes of the administration.

“The country is close to complete lock-down,” Enjolras marvels. He’s sat in the Musain, staring at the blank television. The only other people in the room are the serving-girls and Grantaire, who’s leaning against the wall, smoking.

France is crippled, hobbled. France stares out at the rest of the world with dead eyes. Pleading.

“Seems kind of apocalyptic,” Grantaire comments with his next exhale. “The media are always the first to go. Once you’re cut off, it’s easy to dissolve the state. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“We want reformation, not dissolution of all structure,” Enjolras corrects, tearing his eyes away from the television screen that shows nothing but empty static. “A solution.”

Grantaire snorts. “‘We’? I didn’t know I was involved.”

“Everyone is.”

Grantaire lights another cigarette. At this rate he’ll be solely responsible for keeping the industry in business, he thinks wryly. Supporting the systems and establishments that they’re supposed to be opposing—he wonders if Enjolras would leave if he said that aloud. In any case it’s better than the drinking.

“Why do you bother?” he says, trying for something that doesn’t sound bitter and failing miserably at it. “You never used to give a damn what I did, if I was on your side or not—Christ, you didn’t know I existed, before you had to come to the Sorbonne.”

“I care about all of my friends,” says Enjolras.

“You flatter me,” Grantaire says. He doesn’t try to mask the bitterness; it sits heavily on his tongue, mingling with the sickly sweet taste of cigarette smoke. “We were never friends. Not before this.”

Enjolras just watches him with those bright eyes.

The eyes are what give him away. Blue enough to rival Sinatra. He could be a child still, if you didn’t see his eyes. The eyes are ancient, full, weighted down.

“Don’t say we were,” Grantaire warns. He wants another cigarette. He’s currently smoking and he still wants a smoke. It’s a ruin, and nothing so beautiful as the graffiti sprayed on the walls would have them believe.

“No, I suppose we weren’t," Enjolras acquiesces. He sighs. “But our friends have been friends since forever, and we’ve known each other well enough, so—” He shrugs, as though it’s a simple matter. As though the mere fact that Nanterre and Sorbonne stand in solidarity means that the two of them should as well.

“If it’s any help I’ve literally always wanted,” Grantaire starts, then stops, because he isn’t entirely self-destructive. Not yet. “You know I believe in you.”

“You’ve made that much clear, yes.”

“I didn’t come here because I gave a damn about what you’re trying to do,” says Grantaire, a little desperately, indicating the streets with their barricades and reforms and revolution in one all-encompassing sweep of his hand. _Say it with a brick_. Enjolras must remember that. “I came here because my friends were here.”

Enjolras doesn’t smile, not exactly—it’s more like an involuntary grimace. “I know,” he says. His words are cold, but the curve of his mouth is still soft.

“And you, obviously,” Grantaire babbles, waving his hand again, “not to imply ulterior motives but _Christ_ , you know I have ulterior motives, you know my views, there’s no foreseeable future after the administration clears away the barricades—I’m not—the beauty is in the streets, they say, but what about when you’re in the café? The police hold half the city, and the students the rest. The PCF has already been breaking apart like mouldy bread, to say nothing of the PSU. Ironic, that the party most devoted to sharing has decided to place its own gains above those of the people. Or do they count as _the people?_ Long live the people, you say; what defines the people? Isn’t the government made up of people just like the universities and factories are? Are the cops people, too? Do they have a place in your utopia? Marx wrote about utopia. You’re going to get yourself killed—”

“ _Grantaire_ ,” says Enjolras, sharp.

That gets him to shut up. He’s standing on the edge of a cliff, buffeted by the wind.

Enjolras doesn’t let go, damn him. “It’ll be fine,” he says instead, which is a non-sequitur, and Grantaire takes a step off the cliff and relaxes his hand in Enjolras’s grip.

“If you ever need anything,” says Grantaire. “I’d offer—everything I have.”

“You?” says Enjolras, startled. “You—don’t even believe in what we’re doing.”

Grantaire scoffs, placing his free hand over his heart. “You mock me, _ange_. I’m a student, same as the rest of you—and a Marxist, albeit of the _tendance Groucho_ ; I have read _Das Kapital_ , and the _Manifesto_ , and others. I have a copy of Reich that rests on my bureau. I know of the three _M_ s—Marx, Mao, Marcuse. I accuse myself, but I love my country. _Je vais jouir sans entraves._ It’s been written on the walls. You don’t think me fit for the job?”

“I haven’t defined what the job is.” Enjolras’s eyes are dark.

“Would you command me? _Le patron a besoin de toi; tu n’as pas besoin de lui_. In such a case, I would defy the stereotype. And yet the political system dissolves when you throw a ruler into the mix. No, you would never lead, you would only illuminate. Prometheus, then?”

“I don’t plan to end up being chained to a rock with eagles eating my liver,” says Enjolras dryly. He’s let go of Grantaire’s wrist; the loss of touch burns.

Grantaire shrugs graciously. “No one does. I could take the fall for you. I would.”

“Given the amount of drinking you do,” says Enjolras, “I hardly think your liver would be a good substitute.”

“I mostly smoke, nowadays,” Grantaire admits. “It’s the lungs you want to avoid. So you say my liver is—diseased, rotten, deformed? Or perhaps that I suffer from a _lack_ of a liver? Are we speaking of my liver in regards to you?”

Enjolras frowns. “In terms of your _faith_ you must find something to heal, in terms of your _liver_ you must find something to heal you. In terms of the relation to me, well—I can’t speak for that.”

“Prometheus was too much of an asshole for you,” says Grantaire, after a pause. “Hide the bones beneath the meat. You like to play nice; you could never fool de Gaulle.”

“Is de Gaulle playing the role of Zeus, then?”

“We’re all playing roles,” Grantaire says, rolling his eyes. “Boy to man to politician, corrupt or pure, sincere or facetious, everyone reads the script. Some have better diction than others—present company—and some stumble along their lines like a train along the track. The trains aren’t running in Paris, not any more. But still every man has a role to play.”

“What’s yours?”

Grantaire considers. “The Chorus,” he says, finally. “ _Khoryphaios_.”

* * *

**Lundi, Mai 27, 1968**

The Charléty seats twenty thousand officially, but the crowd packed into the stadium easy outstrips that estimate. Later, the numbers published will estimate anywhere from thirty to fifty thousand students and workers pulled from the streets and bottle-necked into the building.

It is five o’clock by the time the stadium has been filled with the workers and students who arrive at the end of their march from Gobelins to the stadium; people spill from the bleachers down into the green centre, where the officials stand, the people heading this particular movement: Michel Rocard, Pierre Mendès-France, others.

Formally this is a meeting of the UNEF, but nothing is formal anymore. The appearance of Rocard means the PSU attends; the appearance of Mendès-France means that the _droitistes_ will oppose the event. There is a rumour that Jean-Marie Le Pen, the infamous _poujadiste_ , will attend, although he has not been seen.

The atmosphere of the stadium is one of excitement. It takes nearly ten minutes for the crowd to quiet itself after Mendès-France attempts to begin speaking.

* * *

Earlier in the day: Renault has lost nearly ninety percent of its workers to the movement. Negotiations resume, this time for a higher minimum wage and cuts to working hours, with the addition of reduction in the age of retirement. And, as always, the right to organise.

It could be just another futile, fruitless meeting, but this time is different.

This is the situation of France in 1968: a piece of taffy stretched too thin, a basting-paper flier ripped in half and fluttering in the wind, the ashy debris of cigarettes, bottle bombs, tear gas canisters, burnt fabric and paper and rubber, singed brick and chipped concrete. The cobblestones, worn smooth underfoot. The tense tatters of shredded _tricolores_.

Agreements are reached. Tentatively, grudgingly, but decisively. Agreement is reached between the unions, the employer’s associations, and the government. The administrations quaver, fold, bend.

And then: Charléty.

* * *


	2. Deuxième partie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for a brief summary of What Happened Next (historically speaking).

* * *

**CINQUIÈME PARTIE: LES ATELIERS.  
Sois jeune et tais-toi.**

**Mardi, Mai 28, 1968**

This is the way the world ends: swift, a knife across a throat, a letter-opener across a sheet of paper. Paris is still smouldering, the vestigial ashes of long-dead bonfires kicking up dust across the cobblestones, across the soot-smudged pillars of the universities, the tattered _affiches_ still ticker-taped to the walls. De Gaulle’s fist has faltered, but his grip remains tight around the throat of France.

There is still talk of insurrection—there is talk of military, of the tanks in the south, of the armed CRS in the north. After all, this is the way the world ends: the threat of something weighs more than the blow itself. Another brick on the back of the government; another pile of kindling on the chests of the students.

This is the way the world ends: Georges Pompidou accepts the resignation of the Minister of Education.

 _Il y a six mois_ , Marius thinks.

Six months ago, this would have been a victory.

He sits on the _quai_ , the _rive gauche_ , with Cosette, and watches the future crumble.

This is the way the world ends—

* * *

Pigeons returning to their roosts, pecking at the crusts of hard, dried bread left on the streets. Children running through the drifting smoke, playing toy soldiers, shields made of a CRS officer’s shattered face guard. City cats slinking behind buildings, stalking the rodents that creep from their disturbed burrows beneath the pavement, beady eyes fixed on the plump birds. The workers gather armfuls of torn or graffitied posters, papers, pamphlets—everything that burns will have its place. Everything that can be set alight will be added to the scrap pile. The work has not ended; the shift in focus has changed nothing of the _fondamentalisme_ of the world.

* * *

This is the way the world ends—

* * *

Cosette’s fingers, sticky with taffy, the paper bags of _bonbons_ for two francs. Her mouth, red from the wind whipping off the river. Her cheeks, flushed pink, under her grey woollen scarf. _My father,_ she says, tucking her nose beneath the soft folds, _my father made this for me_.

She is reluctant to speak of her father. Marius knows he was respected, once; a mayor, a bureaucrat, of some small village or other. Friendly with the local _poste_ , known at the _boulangerie_ and the _confiserie_. Marius has seen him, once or twice, walking with Cosette through the topsy-turvy streets of the heart of France—his beard white, his hat neat, his coat flapping around his ankles. Cosette’s small hand gripping his arm, head tucked against his broad shoulder.

Monsieur le blanc, Courfeyrac calls him. Monsieur sans expression.

* * *

This is the way the world ends—

* * *

This is the way the world ends—

* * *

This is the way the world ends—

* * *

**Mercredi, Mai 29, 1968**

Later, once the dust has settled, the media will report what went on behind the curtain—Monsieur le Président’s cancellation of his weekly ministerial meeting, his private helicopter flight to Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises in the evening, his secret _visite_ to Generals Massu and Hublot. The squadron of French troops stationed at Baden-Wurttemberg. The hands resting on the triggers of rifles. It is not de Gaulle whose finger releases the safety catch; it is not Pompidou’s throat loosing the order: _fusillez!_

 _Veuillez fusiller; fusillez-moi avec eux_.

There is no escape, once the curtain creaks down on the shambles of what remains of France.

The rain is battering the windows of the café, fists rapping on the door, the wall, the roof. Enjolras sits taut in his chair, eyes fixed on the storm outside. The radio in the corner is spitting out static. A half-hearted taunt.

Paris bleeds cinders, not cinderblocks.

Demonstrations have become almost commonplace. The CGT brings hundreds of thousands of bodies into the swelling streets of Paris, and the remaining citizens hardly change how they go about their day, weaving around the blockades in the streets in the barricades that split open the cobblestones.

“Too much of something,” Combeferre murmurs. “Too much of anything.”

Enjolras taps his fingers across Combeferre’s wrist. An apology, an offering; something to fill the empty space that stretches between them, between the students and the government, between Paris and the world. Between the _avenir_ and the present.

Paris yawns an abyss; wide, uncaring. Full of teeth.

* * *

_Périodique_ , LPDG.

Monsieur le Président has cancelled the mercredi meeting with the Council of Ministers and today departs by _hélicoptère_ for an undisclosed destination known only to a handful of close aides. His plan is to arrange a _cabinet_ with the esteemed General Hublot, commander of the 1st Army Corps, and General Massu, head of the French armed forces in _Allemagne_.

* * *

_Périodique_ , LPDG.

The original location suggested by Monsieur le Général Massu, Strasbourg, has been relocated to Sainte-Odile due to unfavourable weather in the area.

* * *

_Périodique_ , LPDG.

Radio reception poor. Meeting relocated to Baden-Baden, West Germany. SVP— _veuillez_ _attendre_.

* * *

Upon his return to France, the motherland, the fatherland, the country of strife and second-chances, revolutions and revolutionaries, students and workers, Monsieur le Président Charles de Gaulle states, as an aside to one of the aides helping him out of the helicopter, “Monsieur, I have come to terms with my second thoughts.”

There will be no war in France.

* * *

**Jeudi, Mai 30, 1968**

Tens of thousands of people are in the streets, marching from Concorde to the Etoile.

“I will not resign,” says de Gaulle’s voice on the radio. He speaks from the Elysée, vigorous, near-furious. “I will not change the Prime Minister... I am today dissolving the Assemblée Nationale.”

The dissolution of the government, decimated. The elections will take place during the original timeframe. Pompidou remains Prime Minster. The sun is high over the city when de Gaulle says over the radio, “The insurgency will be contained by any means necessary.”

Force used to maintain order, hidden behind bureaucratic terminology. Any means necessary? Government supporters are marching towards the Etoile, chanting, “Bienvenue, de Gaulle,” over and over.

How does it feel, to understand that you’ve lost? How can you comprehend it?

“There are about two dozen of us,” says Courfeyrac, half with disbelief and half with despair. He shakes his head.

Two dozen against thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions.

Headed by Malraux, Debré, Schumann, the march is planned to last; supplies are brought along—at least three days’ worth, packed into rucksacks, workers’ bags, students’ briefcases, skirt pockets and handkerchiefs. Headed by Grimaud, the police intend to support this particular march.

De Gaulle has been overt with his threats: the workers must return to work, on threat of the institution of a formal state of emergency. The students must return to their universities, on threat of worse.

It is close to four thirty. Five o’clock creeps ever closer.

A radio station on the scene interviews Grimaud on the numbers: eight hundred thousand supporters of de Gaulle. All political parties have accepted the principle of a new general election.

The PCF is the last to fall, but it falls all the same.

* * *

“The immediate threat of an outright revolution ended on the penultimate day of May,” de Gaulle will say, many years later.

He will also say that he did in fact consider retiring on the last few days of the month, when the fate of France hung suspended on the balance between surrender and destruction.

Every television screen shows the same image: eight hundred thousand government supporters waving the _tricolore_ , chanting their _soutien_ of de Gaulle and his policies. Their support.

* * *

Enjolras doesn’t quite step fully into the café, and the door thumps against his back. “The CGT is arranging another demonstration,” he says, when Combeferre and Courfeyrac look up, twin beacons. “The news on the radio is that fifty thousand are expected.”

Courfeyrac frowns. “Do they think this will help? Fifty thousand, _eh bien_ ; does the CGT hope to bring the country to war?”

“It could be the PCF,” Combeferre points out. “They’ve moved to more overt methods.”

“What’s the difference,” mutters Courfeyrac.

“The difference is, the CGT is composed of workers, whereas the PCF is a façade. The government would reason with the PCF,” says Enjolras. “We know none of the administration wishes to speak with those of us on the ground. If there’s to be a demonstration, the PCF will want it to go peacefully. Easily. Something the CRS can’t use as an excuse to beat us back down into the stones.”

“Sous les pavés, la plage,” Combeferre says. The beach; the sand. The ocean.

Enjolras taps his fingers on the table, considering. The radio in the background is warbling out the faint strains of Dutronc, unconcerned with the plotting and scheming. Outside, the rain is still beating the windows like a _flic_ ’s baton.

Courfeyrac says, “We have to disrupt it.”

* * *

Paris in 1968: hot and thick with humidity, fermenting in puddles of rainwater and motor oil. Dirty, torn; tattered. Papers clogging the alleys and drains. Echoes of smoke bombs and tear gas explosions against the walls. Somewhere, someone is writing a newspaper article on the _loss of reverence for history and culture displayed by the youth of this decade_ ; somewhere, someone is writing a bitter, impassioned speech on the decay of the previous generation. Sartre stands on an invisible packing crate, declaiming to a crowd of students. There are smoke rings in the clouds that hang, grey and fat with rain, above France.

The beaches are open, in the south. No matter the political upheaval of the cities, the students, the workers, the government, the tourists are always going to flock like seagulls to the southern retreats, the sand and the sun. Somewhere, someone is shading squinted eyes against the sun as it meanders from behind a curtain; somewhere, someone is strolling, _en_ _flânant_ , holding a toddler’s plump, toffee-sticky hands. Bathing suits, sunglasses, beach blankets. The world goes on.

Meanwhile, in the whirlpool, in the centre of it all, the heavy curtain is creaking down on the shambles of France. The encore is coming to a close.

* * *

This is the way the world ends, Feuilly thinks, and grips his bag tighter. Everything he owns in a single leather satchel—a carving-knife, for digging up stones; a sandwich, wrapped in wax paper, from Marius’s collection. A hand-bound notebook and pen. A pile of loose papers, tied together with a shoelace. His gloves. A spare pair of socks, tucked inside one another. The cap he wears on his head, pulled down over unruly curls.

Beside him, Bahorel is smoking, a broken fragment of brick in his hand. “Well, comrade. You prepared to bid _adieu_ to de Gaulle?”

Feuilly shrugs. “A dieu, au diable, who can say. I certainly wouldn’t want to make assumptions as to his nature.”

Bahorel laughs, a full, hearty sound. “Ah!” he says, clutching his chest with exaggerated fervour. “I think we’ve done nothing _but_ be judges of character, my friend. The government, the administration, they seek to judge the _jeunesse_ for our frivolity, our rowdy ways, whichever commandment we’ve broken this soirée; we’re only returning the favour.”

“By disrupting their victory parade,” Feuilly says, amused. He tugs the gloves from his bag, pulls them on. It’s early enough in the morning that last night’s chill still lingers like a cough Paris can’t quite shake. “Tell me, did you manage to find someone else to print your propaganda?”

“None can compare to your stoic devotion,” says Bahorel, wrapping his free arm around Feuilly’s shoulders. “You and Enjolras, pas de _dure_ —and speaking of our lit oriflamme, where _is_ the glorious _Michel_ _l’archange_ this morning?”

“Papers. He and the _nanterrois_ , I think. I’m not his keeper.”

“Would that it were so simple.” Bahorel stubs out his cigarette on the brick in his hand, then tucks Feuilly back under his arm. “Well, no sense in waiting for trouble to arrive, comrade. What we seek we must create.”

“I seek a warm bed,” Feuilly says, dry, but he rubs his gloved hands together and allows Bahorel to steer him down the rue Cujas, towards the square.

* * *

This is the way the world ends: the police are armed, prepared. Joly is still tugging on his left boot, trying to keep his balance with one leg still healing, when Bossuet pokes his head in the door and says, “Better hurry, the _flics_ have their _flèches_ in the barrels of their guns.”

Joly yelps in surprise and kicks the boot halfway across the room. “ _L’aigle!_ ”

“Ah, shit.” Bossuet scrambles to receive the errant boot, presenting it to Joly like a dragon’s head, a hero waiting to be knighted. He allows Joly to place one hand on his shoulder for balance—a steady surface, a mooring rock. “Pull on your boots, _joli_ , we’re picking up Musichetta at the Corinthe before we meet the others.”

“I’ve _been_ working on it—are we bringing Grantaire? Maybe the alcohol? The goûter? An umbrella? If it’s still raining, I don’t care how many _poulets_ are out there, I’ll push past the entire CRS if it means I can avoid catching cold.”

“I’ll protect you,” Bossuet says valiantly, “and no, our only quest is to retrieve Musichetta from the café, and then re-join the others in opposition to the moderates. If we have to take down a handful of cops on our way there, well, so be it.”

Joly frowns. He hopes not; running over broken cobblestones is difficult enough as it is. He’s not as fast as Bossuet, or as quick-footed as Musichetta. He can’t dart up walls like in some of the BDs Gavroche had shown him, superheroes with magic soles on their shoes, or innate powers allowing them to run across the ceiling like lizards or bugs.

“I wish I were a cat,” he says.

Bossuet makes a sound that’s somewhere between a kitten’s purr and an automobile’s engine stalling. “As long as I’m not a mouse, I’ll fully support your feline transformation. You might want to discuss this with Musichetta, though. She’d probably know the best way to go about getting you whiskers and a tail.”

“If she can’t fix your hairline, I won’t hold out hope,” Joly says.

“I will drop you, _niqueur_ ,” Bossuet warns. “And then Musichetta will cry, and then she won’t fix anyone’s hair, _chat_ or _chauve_ , and then none of us will be the wiser.”

* * *

This is the way the world ends: a swill of dirty rainwater, down a drain. The black scuffed leather of a _flic_ ’s boot. A residual smear of blood drying underneath someone’s fingernails, packed in with the dirt and dust from digging up bricks. The broken glass catching the morning light, a fine carpet of crushed, shining grains of sand.

Bahorel’s coat is red, like blood, like a matador’s curtain. Cut from the same cloth as the flags dripping rain from their position above the Sorbonne. Feuilly huddles closer to Bahorel’s side, leaching the warmth, a small, dark stain on the scarlet.

The bright colour of the coat reflects in the shiny puddles of rainwater and oil and petrol on the streets. Blood, Feuilly thinks. Spilled crimson.

 _Lundi sanglant_ is weeks in the grave.

* * *

This is the way the world ends.

Eponine slinks out of the Corinthe, shoulders pulled up by her ears, rough bangs obscuring her eyes, and almost crashes directly into her brother.

“Shit!” Gavroche yelps, jumping back and placing his hands on his hips like a four-foot matronly caricature. “Watch where you’re going, ma’amselle, you could have run me over like a bug!— _splat!_ ” He sticks out his tongue; it’s stained pink from some sweet probably plucked with deft fingers from a student’s pocket.

Instead of answering, Eponine grabs him by the collar and drags him behind her as she stomps around to the side of the café, the thin alley between the Corinthe and the grocer’s shop next door. She releases him, then, and leans back against one of the blue-painted posts where the Corinthe’s sign hangs, creaking faintly in the wind.

Gavroche folds his arms and glares. “What’s this about, _hein?_ Ponpon, Navet and I weren’t at the elephant when those _poules_ got their heads knocked about, I swear—left hand! I was at the cinémathèque, spreading pamphlets—l’affaire Langlois, with Montparnasse—ask him!”

“No,” Eponine says. “I don’t want to talk to Montparnasse, I don’t care what garden you and Navet were digging up, I want information. The students, they’re planning a demonstration today, _hein?_ Did you hear about that?”

“I hear everything,” Gavroche says, puffing out his chest, as though he has eleven feet in height instead of eleven years of age. “Is this about your Sciences Po boyfriend?”

“ _No_ ,” Eponine snaps, shaking him. “He’s got someone else, anyway, some _pouffiasse_ from Beaux-Arts, he wanted me to find out about her.”

This is the Thénardier family talent, she thinks, staring down at her brother’s dark eyes under his cap. We find people.

“So, what is it then?”

“I want to know if Papa is going to be there,” she hisses, gritting her teeth together. Her mouth tastes like sand, like cardboard. “And—and Montparnasse, and the others. I don’t want them to get in the way.”

Gavroche cocks his head to the side. “Sure, I can chew the _ragots_. You planning to join the revolution, Ponpon?”

“No. Give me your hat,” she says, and snatches it off his head before he can protest. She shoves her hair into a messy twist of a bun and yanks the cap down over her forehead. Her brother is still watching her, eyes narrowed.

He’s smart enough not to fight; Eponine isn’t feeling particularly restrained. Her chest feels like there’s something growing inside it, a trapped bird beating its wings and clawing at her ribcage, trying to force its way out.

If she stays in one place for too long, she’ll burst into pieces like a bottle bomb.

She feels like the ugly crooked soldier on the sign painted over Papa’s little shop, the one Mama told her once was the man whose life her Papa had saved in the war, somewhere far away, in _the country where we belong, where these French_ salops _won’t look down their noses at us like we’re second-rate filth_. She’s never been to Vietnam; she doesn’t think she’d belong. Eponine belongs in the twisting, labyrinthine streets of Paris, the tall buildings and sun-heated cobblestones, the market stalls and baker’s wagons, the flocks of fat pigeons and tourists with their yawning pockets. She fits in here, in the shadows of the city’s splendour, in the back-alleys of France’s madcap rush towards the world of the future; here, where she can read the city like an address-book, find any name, any place, anyone for the right price. She can’t imagine ever making it out.

Gavroche is still looking at her, biting his lower lip. There’s a smear of something like chocolate on the corner of his mouth. _Pain au chocolat_ , Eponine thinks dizzily. It occurs to her, then, that she can’t quite remember the last time she ate.

“I’m not going to join the revolution,” she says. Her voice sounds rough, even to her. “I’m just going to see things.”

Gavroche snorts. “ _Chiant!_ That’s how it all starts.”

A crust of bread, when helping Marius find his friend—or, no; a half-bruised apple that had tumbled out of the grocer’s basket. She can’t remember. Her stomach is as small and tight as a hazelnut.

“Just find Papa and the _foule_ ,” Eponine says, glaring at him as though her older-sister glare didn’t stop working as soon as he was old enough to toddle around after her and Azelma on wobbly legs. “I don’t care what you do after that.”

Gavroche salutes her, a miniature soldier, then brushes back his messy hair. “Only if you bring my cap back,” he says, mulish, but his eyes are smiling.

This is the way the world ends, she thinks, light-headed, and wonders if Azelma is still at home, sitting in her chair and sewing a doll’s dress back together, or serving tables like Eponine used to be. She thinks, she hasn’t seen her sister since before the last time she had something decent to eat.

* * *

**Vendredi, Mai 31, 1968**

“How did it go?” asks Cosette.

Her voice is soft. Marius shrugs.

He doesn’t know what else there is to say. He can still smell the stench of burning hair, Molotov cocktails, the melting tyres dropped into the fires scattered beside the barricades. _Riot_ , he thinks. An _émeute_.

The word sits on his tongue like a pill too large to swallow.

He reaches automatically for his water, and almost chokes on it. Cosette snatches the glass and rubs his back, eyes wide. Concern, perhaps.

Marius thinks: I don’t know what to say.

He wants to tell her about the police, slithering through the interstices in the barricades, spreading lies and misinformation like the fire that gobbled up petrol-soaked flags. Enjolras speaking to the head of the Paris police—Maurice Grimaud, alias Javert, the deep cut on his left temple still healing. The sick sound of someone’s skull against concrete. The _fwoosh_ of an explosion, too close to his face. The numbers. The sheer numbers—five hundred thousand, Javert had told Enjolras, face grim.

The expectation had been fifty thousand.

“I saw, on the television,” Cosette says. The words fall into the silence, and Marius tries not to flinch; fails. Her hand on his arm is gentle. “Pompidou was doing an interview with some of the police, some of the officials in the government. I saw—I think you told me you knew him, Monsieur Gillenormand, the minister?”

Marius squeezes his eyes shut. “Yes,” he manages. “He—my grandfather.”

So, he thinks. His grandfather is still alive.

 _If you leave this house to marry that—that—that_ fille d’une pute _, you’ll kill me!—you’ll be killing your grandfather, is that what you want?—your only family!_

Cosette touches his arm again. “Do you think you want to talk to him?”

“ _No_ ,” Marius says, surprising himself with the rush of anger that accompanies his reply. His chest aches with everything he can’t fit words into. “No, I—I don’t think I can talk to him.”

“I told my father about—about you,” Cosette says, sounding small. “I wanted to make sure he knew I wouldn’t be alone, when I go out into the city. That I have friends.”

Marius lifts his head to look at her, her earnest face, her wide eyes. “I—thank you,” he says, “Cosette.”

She beams at him. “He wanted to know all about—us, of course. I didn’t tell him everything, I wanted to wait until you could be there too, but he knows that I... that I love you, and that you’re a good man.”

 _If you step over that threshold_ , his grandfather bellows in his head, _I’ll never speak to you again, I’ll burn all your things, you’ll never see pictures of your mother again_ —

“Cosette,” he says, and kisses her. She touches his cheekbone with two fingers, where there’s a purple-yellow bruise from the night before, then presses her lips to the bruise. “Cosette—”

And then the words spill out, like someone’s slashed his throat open. He can’t stop talking.

The sun rising over the crooked spires of the cathedral, the universities, the shops and apartments and government buildings. The lingering stench of sulphur, of petrol, of citrus. The massive crowd, undulating, sinuous, making its way through the streets. The rising roar of half a million voices, all shouting together, _adieu, de Gaulle_ , the rhythm of the chants and of the thudding of boots on the bricks. Bahorel’s sneer when he’d hissed, _Javert, the_ flics, _they’re pretending to be with the CGT, with the workers, telling us we should just fucking go home_ —; the burning sting of tear gas biting his skin as he’d half-run, half-stumbled away from the fog of acid, arms flung over his head; the quelling tactics of the police—the clever little way they’d avoided laying a single finger on the demonstrators, on the PCF and their coterie, on the Gaullistes and their horde of vipers. _We have prevented outright revolution through negotiating concessions with the radicals_ , Javert had said, later, on the television and on the radio, his voice ubiquitous, heavy, impossible to escape. Speaking to, spying on, communicating with; by whatever means necessary. A forgotten smoke bomb, a discarded canister of tear gas—plausible deniability, Enjolras had said, looking disgusted. Nowhere to pin the blame. The perpetual frog in the throats of the insurgents, the revolutionaries; the students, the workers. Everyone.

Fifty thousand to five hundred thousand, and it hardly changed a thing. The police hadn’t touched them, no; still, none of the students or workers escaped without damage. The words were more caustic than the flames themselves.

Someone had thrown a brick through the window of Feuilly’s print shop. Someone else had spray-painted on the wall, in the bleeding red of _anarchie_ : NIQUE TA MÈRE NIQUE TA GUERRE.

 _Collaborateur_ , they’d called him. _Modéré_.

Cosette keeps her hand on his arm. Marius thinks, without something to hold on to, he wouldn’t be able to avoid sinking beneath the surface.

* * *

Bahorel picks up one of the larger pieces of broken glass and holds it up to the weak evening light. “Proto-historic knives,” he comments, then tosses the shard into the bin.

Feuilly doesn’t look up from where he’s sweeping up the scraps of paper and smaller fragments of glass, but there’s a note of dry humour in his voice when he says, “Use it to slash a cop’s face, turn the cycle around.”

The window hadn’t been broken by the police: they both know this. The wall hadn’t been painted by the police.

Bahorel straightens up, yesterday’s fury rising in his throat like bile. “ _Fuck_ the PCF,” he says, full of vitriol. “They want to build a better world? Well, I say fuck that. There’s no use in re-plastering the walls if the structure itself is rotting away at the base. You have to tear down the building itself.”

“Yes,” says Feuilly, “I remember when you said that about my print shop.”

* * *

The government is reshuffled like an old pack of playing cards. It is impossible to know if the demonstration engendered any meaningful change; it could have been the whimsy of de Gaulle himself, his morbid tendency to prod at the healing bruise until it starts to bleed once again.

On the television, on the radio, the ineluctable presence of de Gaulle remains, like a broken bone never set right. There will be government elections occurring on the 23 and 30 of June, one of his representatives says, looking bland and overtired. The news flickers through footage of demonstrations of support for the government being held throughout France. They linger on closeups of the pro-Gaullist signs, panning over the crowds chanting their devotion, resting almost lovingly on a still photograph of two workers from Berliet, standing in front of the once-repurposed sign, holding a wide banner: NOUS VOUS INVITONS A VISITER NOTRE USINE. Berliet: once LIBERTÉ, now back to BERLIET. The structure is rotten; the walls are crumbling under the strain.

The world in 1968: tired eyes, heavy heads, sore backs. The civilians are weary of the fight, of living parallel to an upheaval. Exchange controls have been re-established; the strikes are petering out. The picket lines are curved, faded.

 _C’est la façon dont le monde finit_ , Dutronc croons through the radio, staticky and mournful.

This is the way the world ends: je gémis, je gémis, je gémis.

Mai est fini; May is finished.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the events herein depicted, the revolution of 1968 was, effectively, over. The students returned to the universities; the workers returned to the factories. While the leftist parties gained several footholds in the government, they did not engender the change they had hoped for. Much in the same manner of the juin 1832 rebellion, the revolution was not "won" per se. I would consider it more of a pyrrhic victory on the part of the Gaullist conservatives. 
> 
> Sources/references round-up can be found [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uy-Yruj49Ki-EE2_JfLDeFrQXn5ap8yfS3oR1-1TeaQ/edit?usp=sharing).

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [spacestationtrustfund](https://spacestationtrustfund.tumblr.com).  
> Mai 68 blog: [listolier](https://listolier.tumblr.com/).


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